Fear Not

What a week! Actually . . . what a couple of weeks! It’s been a whirlwind of activity for me in the last 14 days. While I am really okay with that, I will say I am a little exhausted. Let me lay this out for you so you know what I am complaining about. *haha* I left my house last Tuesday, April 20th, and headed to Hastings to watch Ben play baseball. I stayed in Hastings overnight. I left Hastings Wednesday morning and headed to Oklahoma where I stayed with my dad overnight. They fed me and took care of me and let me rest before leaving there on Thursday morning for the last leg of my trip which took me to Texas . . . to the beautiful hill country of Spring Branch, Texas, which is just north of San Antonio. I didn’t do any of the normal touristy things while there as there just wasn’t enough time. I had a lot of business to accomplish. I stayed with wonderful friends who are like family, Ken and Mary, and once again, I was more than well cared for. I left Spring Branch on Tuesday morning and stayed in Amarillo overnight before coming the rest of the way home on Wednesday. Then, you know, because I love being in the car so dang much, Franklin and I drove back to Hastings (actually past Hastings to Fremont, NE) to watch Ben play his last baseball games of the season. We stayed overnight in Hastings and came home later Friday evening. I spent 46 hours in my car in 10 days. More if you count the driving we did while I was in Texas. I will say that unless I absolutely have to be gone, I am home for a while. I am done! While I was in Texas, Ken, Mary and I did take a trip that Sunday after church so I could visit the Empty Cross in Kerrville, TX. It was an amazing experience where you can feel the presence of God and worship Him in spirit and in truth, as the book of John says. We met a group of ladies there who were from a San Antonio ministry for women struggling with addiction. It was great to make their acquaintance and Mary felt led to talk with them and ask if they would like us to pray for/with them. They graciously said they would appreciate that. So we did. We prayed with them and we were all blessed by that. I can’t speak for Ken or Mary but I will tell you they were heavy on my heart and mind on the return trip back to Spring Branch and well into the evening. This blog has been about my weight loss journey and things I have discovered about myself through it all. And I had a lot of time in the car, by myself, the last two weeks. I prayed, I worshipped, I sang (A LOT), I thought, I discovered and I came to a few conclusions. And I want to share a couple of those thoughts with you today. 

The first one came from the trip to the Empty Cross. That group of ladies we encountered and prayed with touched me. They impacted me. Only God knows their full stories. And that is fine. I don’t need to know the story about someone to pray for them, and reach out to them, to reach for them, where they are. God knows. And as I have prayed each day for them, I just pray for what God knows is there. But coming home I thought about how difficult their journey back will be for them. They have lived through a sort of hell on earth. Some have been separated from family. Some have been separated from their children. All have been separated from the life they dreamed of having at one point. And I would bet all of them felt separated from God’s love and grace at one time or another through their journey. Addiction of ANY kind is a terrible thing to struggle with. Our family has first hand experience with what addiction can do. It can tear families apart. It can destroy the lives of many in the blink of an eye, it seems. It is so easy to judge from the outside, too. You may think when you look in, “Why can’t they just put *insert addiction here* down?” Drugs, alcohol, pornography, cigarettes, sex, food . . . whatever it is. My struggle has always been with food. I dealt with something much, MUCH smaller than what they do and I still couldn’t get a grip, it seemed. Why couldn’t I have more self control? Why couldn’t I tell myself “no” once in a while? Why did I like how food made me feel? Why did I think that hiding behind layers of fat would protect me from WHATEVER I thought I needed protection from? I am here to tell you, if I had the answers to those questions and the hundred others that bounced off the walls of my mind every day, I would be a very wealthy girl for being able to “sell the secrets” of my success to those asking themselves the same questions. The best I can do right now is to reach out to others, whether through this blog or through my business, and offer them hope for a change. Let them know they aren’t alone. They still have to take the hand I have extended but it is there for them to take. I want to help others. That’s one of my highest callings right now. Parenting is still number one for me at this moment in time. But you get what I am saying. 

Another thing that I thought about didn’t actually come to mind until I was a few hours from home on Wednesday. That thought was, “Dang, girl. You just drove for 34 freakin’ (yes, I said freakin’) hours ALONE across 5 states! What on earth were you thinking?” And all of a sudden, I felt fear for the first time during my trip. Like actual fear. Of what? I don’t even know. But here’s where it helps to know me a little . . . As “The Most Interesting Man In The World” from the Dos Equis beer commercials would say, “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis,” Lacy’s saying could be, “I don’t always fear stuff, but when I do it is usually, stupid, unsubstantiated crap.” I mean, I still sleep with a night light because I am that afraid of the dark. And, yes, I am married to one absolutely patient, saint of a man. My mind has a tendency to fear things that are completely irrational and even silly, if we look at them honestly. I had fears when I was much larger that I would choke and I was large enough that no one could get their arms around me to perform the Heimlich maneuver. Because I couldn’t find clothes that actually fit me in any store . . . ANY STORE . . . I had to order from catalogs. I feared that my house would burn down and I wouldn’t have clothes to wear until I could get them ordered from a catalog. I feared things that most people have probably never even thought about. And all of them were fairly unsubstantiated. None of them were anywhere close to happening. But you catch my drift here. I have also feared the unknown before. I think most of us have. Especially when things don’t seem to go the way they should or the way we expect. And as I thought about that, I thought about those girls and the fear they must have sometimes about the future and what that looks like for them. Sometimes, it’s easier to stay in an addiction or a circumstance rather than face what has happened and the consequences and the FEAR that nothing will ever be all right again. But major praise and props to those who can work through those fears and come out on the other side to be healed and whole again. 

Coming home, having that fear hit me like it did, working through that fear and recognizing the source of that fear, I was led to one big conclusion. I am done. I am done being afraid of the “new me” who’s waiting on the other side of fat Lacy. I am done being afraid of the unknown. I made a couple resolutions to myself in the car. One of those is to stay on track until I reach my ultimate goals with my weight loss. Another is to be as prepared as I can be for the other “crap” life can throw at me. Physically, mentally and spiritually prepared. As best as I can be anyway. There are a lot of battles to face in life. I don’t need to add to it with my unsubstantiated fears of things that will most likely never come to pass anyway. Wasting another moment on things that I could let steal from me is not an option any longer. I have mentioned Zach Williams before. He sings some pretty incredible songs and I want to leave a couple of his titles here for you to listen to. One is called, “Fear Is a Liar.” Another song is titled, “Come To The Table.” Look up his live version of that one. He talks about his own struggle with addiction when he is prefacing the song. They are incredibly powerful songs that really speak to the heart of fear and pain. And, yes, addiction. We are worth whatever it takes to live the life God intended for us. I have decided that life is too short to fear things that may not ever happen. And I am taking small steps to put my faith ahead of my fear. Just don’t ask me to give up my night light. 

#loveyourjourney #youreworthit #bettermewithNewYouCBD #Endo30 #itsuptoyou